With all the necessary components mounted and displayed on a wooden board, this 1923 Atwater Kent breadboard radio appealed to the curious consumer fascinated by new technology. A harbinger of both technological and social advancements, the advent of the radio drastically changed Philadelphians’ means of communication and connection to communities beyond their front stoop. Founded by A. Atwater Kent (1873-1949), the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company operated in Philadelphia from 1902 to 1936. In order to keep up with ever-evolving machinery, Atwater Kent introduced seven different “breadboard” radio models in 1923 alone. This radio, Model 4052, was the fourth installment.

A breadboard radio, so named for its wooden cutting board-like base, lacks any form of external casing. All of the hardware required to power the radio, receive radio signals, and amplify those signals is installed on top of the wooden board. The tuning dial sits at the far left with the Radio Frequency (RF) Amplifier directly next to it. To operate this radio, a user would need to connect an antenna to the tuner to attract the radio signals, which would filter through the RF Amplifier to be converted to a higher power signal. The potentiometer and transformer sitting to the right of the RF Amplifier fine-tuned the radio signal to make it suitable for home use. These elements were all wired together underneath the board, so they were very easy to assemble. Designed to be simple and utilitarian, the breadboard radio layout kept prices low and parts easily replaceable.

Unlike most other modern appliances, this breadboard radio could not simply be plugged into the wall (the first 110-volt electric radio was not invented until 1926). All of the early Atwater Kent models ran on batteries that connected to the wiring beneath the board. These batteries were large, heavy, and messy—they often leaked acid right on to the living room floor. In addition to leaking acid, the batteries did not hold a charge for very long, so families would keep two sets to swap out a freshly charged pair when necessary.

Once thoroughly charged, the Model 4052 radio had enough battery power to drive a horn or cone speaker. It connected directly to the amplifier, the piece on the right end of the board with the three tubes on top. Earlier models could only connect to headphones for one person to listen at a time, but with the horn and cone speakers, whole families could listen to radio programs, news broadcasts, or music at the same time. In fact, the acclaimed Atwater Kent Hour, a music program broadcast by the company featuring popular orchestral music, had one of the biggest audiences of the 1920s.

In the early 1920s, breadboard radios were marketed to hobbyists looking to experiment with new technology. They were sold in inexpensive kits and meant to be assembled at home. By 1925, Atwater Kent radio sets ranged in price anywhere from $14 to $5,000. While the wealthier classes of Philadelphia owned enclosed and ornate radio sets by the mid-1920s, radio parts and wiring remained relatively inexpensive for working class families who wanted to build their own. Factory workers of Fishtown could listen to the same news and music as the socialites of Rittenhouse Square.

By 1925, the Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company was the largest maker of radios in America, employing 12,000 people in its Germantown factory. The company began to market enclosed sets, and in 1927, it offered AC-powered radios that ran on in-home electricity. Atwater Kent began manufacturing bigger and more elaborate receivers to keep up with consumer trends, until the stock market crashed in 1929. The Great Depression took its toll on Atwater Kent, and after six long years of declining sales, the company finally ceased operations in 1936.

Although A. Atwater Kent relocated to Los Angeles, Calif., after the company’s dismantling, his legacy lived on in his commitment to the history of Philadelphia. In 1938, Kent purchased the former headquarters building of the Franklin Institute near Seventh and Market Streets for the purpose of creating a museum of Philadelphia’s history. Renamed the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent in 2012, the museum amassed more than 100,000 objects related to Philadelphia’s social history, including this breadboard radio designed by its founder.

Text by Chelsea Clarke Reed, jazz vocalist in the Philadelphia area and public history graduate student at Temple University’s Center for Public History.

This can makes no secret of its American pride. With red and blue stars flanking a bold sketch of the Liberty Bell, Philadelphia’s Henry F. Ortlieb’s Brewing Company appealed to the patriotic fervor of 1976. The company developed the “Collector’s Series,” releasing one can a month starting in September 1975. Every month, an image on the back of each commemorative can highlighted a different Revolutionary War scene or facet of eighteenth-century life to celebrate America’s Bicentennial, the two-hundred-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Looking to the back of the can, we see Paul Revere on horseback with Boston’s Old North Church in the background, presumably with two lanterns glowing in the window. The scene is titled, “Paul Revere’s Ride: Calling the Countryside to Arms.” Though Revere’s ride took place in Massachusetts, eight of the other twelve sketches had direct ties to the Philadelphia area. With depictions of Elfreth’s Alley and Independence Hall, Ortlieb’s capitalized on the city’s rich colonial history while simultaneously paying homage to the company’s roots.

The Henry F. Ortlieb’s Brewing Company was a family-owned business in the Philadelphia area for more than a century. Trupert Ortlieb (1839-1911), a German immigrant and Civil War veteran, began brewing beer in Philadelphia after being discharged from the army in July 1865. In 1879, he purchased his own brewery on Third and Poplar Streets in the Northern Liberties section of the city. Home to a large German population, Northern Liberties was the site of the first lager beer brewed in America. In 1840, a Bavarian immigrant named John Wagner brewed the first lager beer with yeast from his home country. By 1879, eighteen breweries operated in the neighborhood, predominantly owned by German immigrants. Philadelphia’s brewing industry expanded throughout the city with a heavy concentration in the neighborhoods of Brewerytown and Northern Liberties. Ortlieb’s was one of only seventeen Philadelphia breweries to survive Prohibition and continued to grow in the twentieth century.

By the 1960s and 70s, competition from large national breweries threatened Ortlieb’s loyal local following. Following national trends, Henry A. Ortlieb (1948-2004) developed the Bicentennial can series to prompt sales outside the region. From September 1975 to August 1976, patriotic consumers and can collectors from Philadelphia, the Midwest, and New England awaited the next installment of the “Collector’s Series.” Seeing the success of Ortlieb’s campaign, executives at Schmidt’s beer, another Northern Liberties brewery, decided to release their own series of collectible cans.

Philadelphia breweries were not the only companies seeking to profit from the 1976 celebrations. Throughout the country, American manufacturers packaged, sold, and commodified major historical figures and symbols for sale in nearly every possible form during the Bicentennial. Toilet paper, banjos, whiskey bottles, butter packets, and even caskets were marked with Liberty Bells, bald eagles, or any number of American images in order to commemorate the Bicentennial.

In 1977, hoping to continue the success of patriotic advertising, Ortlieb’s started another can series called the “Americana Collection.” However, in 1981, Joseph W. Ortlieb (b. 1929), grandson of the founder, sold the business in response to intense competition from large national brands. Although the brewery was torn down in 2013, the Ortlieb’s Brewpub, located just beside the old brewery, remained a staple of Philadelphia jazz history. From 1987 to 2006, the pub, renamed the Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus, was one of the best jazz venues in the city. With no cover at the door, musicians and jazz lovers came to Ortlieb’s to hear local legends like Shirley Scott (1934-2002) and Granville William “Mickey” Roker (b. 1932) or world famous out-of-towners like Cecil Payne (1922-2007) and Al Grey (1925-2000). After years as a renowned jazz club, the old brewpub switched owners in 2006, but Ortlieb’s remained a staple of the Northern Liberties’ beer-drinking public.

Ortlieb’s has been a mainstay of the Philadelphia community from its beginnings as a lager brewery to its current status as Ortlieb’s Lounge, a popular rock venue in the city. Whether featuring local beer, local history, or local music, the Ortlieb’s name signifies Philadelphia pride. During the Bicentennial, Ortlieb’s capitalized on a surge of patriotism nationwide by highlighting Philadelphia’s unique role within the history of the American Revolution.

Text by Chelsea Clarke Reed, jazz vocalist in the Philadelphia area and a graduate student at  Temple University’s Center for Public History.

Four-pointed wrought iron devices known as caltrops, or crow’s feet, have been used by militaries since antiquity and are still occasionally used today. When dropped, like the cluster shown here, three of the caltrop’s points act as a base while one point sticks up, making it dangerous to humans and horses alike. When placed in groups, caltrops effectively deter enemies from approaching or traveling through areas, much like modern-day land mines.

Caltrops have been found in pre-Revolutionary sites of the English colonies in America, including Jamestown and Ticonderoga, but not in large numbers. This may be because they were re-used as scrap iron, but it is more likely that they are scarce because they were not imported in large numbers nor were they made in the colonies. Most caltrops found in the United States were used during the American Revolution by British defenses. They have been found near Boston and in abundance around New York City, typically near sites of British fortifications and outposts.

Caltrops were not used widely, however, and would have been novelties to many people in the colonies. In January 1776, for example, American surgeon James Thacher (1754-1844) was intrigued when he first saw them in Massachusetts: “I accompanied several gentlemen to view the British fortifications on Roxbury neck, where I observed a prodigious number of little military engines called caltrops, or crow-feet, scattered over the ground in the vicinity of the works to impede the march of our troops in case of an attack. The implement consists of an iron ball armed with four sharp points about one inch in length, so formed that which way soever it may fall one point still lies upwards to pierce the feet of horses or men, and are admirably well calculated to obstruct the march of an enemy.”

It is unknown whether caltrops such as these in the collection of the Philadelphia History Museum might have been used during the British occupation of Philadelphia during 1777-78. That winter, British and American troops attempted to raid each other’s positions, and caltrops would have been useful in preventing such attacks. Caltrops are not mentioned in the papers of Pennsylvania Council of Safety or George Washington, suggesting that Pennsylvania and the Continental Army did not make or employ them. The British would have been more likely to use them to defend and command fixed positions and the approaches to Philadelphia.  As such, these caltrops are evocative reminders of the long winter of 1777-78, the tenuous grasp the British Army had on Philadelphia, and ultimately the end of British occupation.

Text by Matthew C. White, who earned his M.A. in history at Rutgers University-Camden.

If this model for Philadelphia’s first municipal waterworks brings to mind the Pantheon in Rome, it is no coincidence. The building clearly harkened back to classical Greek and Roman architecture with its unimposing Doric columns and prominent dome. An oculus (round window) at the top of the dome opened to the sky to emit an iconic column of steam from the pump house’s engine. With its symmetry and simple orientation, the neoclassical design of the Center Square Pump House embodied Philadelphia’s classical inheritance as well as its industrial future.

Construction on the Centre Square Pump House began in 1799 and was completed two years later. The building’s marriage of classical aesthetics and functionality reflected eighteenth-century Philadelphians’ conception of their city. At the close of the eighteenth century, Philadelphia faced a rapidly growing population, and with it, a need for clean water sources. The yellow fever outbreaks of 1793 and 1798 highlighted this need, and so Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820) was hired to design a new water works for the city. A native of England, Latrobe brought a specialized, professional outlook to architecture, disdaining the American inclination to hire the same agent to design and construct a building. Latrobe strictly separated the trades of designing and building, as was the case with the pump house. For this project, Latrobe brought on his assistant engineer, Frederick Graff (1775-1847) – who built this model – and together they designed the city’s first municipal water system to be both useful and elegant.

The pump house sat in Centre Square, one of the five public spaces designated by William Penn (1644-1718) in the original plan for the city (and later the site of Philadelphia’s City Hall). A series of pumps moved water up from the Schuylkill to the pump house, which then distributed clean water via wooden pipes to water hydrants and paying subscribers, including four breweries and a sugar refinery.

Despite its early promise, the pump house faced a number of issues with its steam engines, which proved rather unreliable and required significant maintenance. By 1815, it became clear that a different solution would be needed. Graff, who by then had become the superintendent and head engineer of the project, encouraged the construction of the more efficient and reliable Fairmount Water Works. The city’s second municipal works opened in 1815 and stood on the Schuylkill just below the later site of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After the switch to Fairmount Water Works, the city continued to use Centre Square Pump House as a distribution point for seventeen more years. The building was finally demolished in 1829. Fairmount was a more successful municipal waterworks, remaining in operation until 1909 and later becoming the site for an aquarium, a pool, a restaurant, and an interpretive center.

Though it stood for only twenty-nine years, the Centre Square Pump House embodied Philadelphia’s role as a birthplace of creative and revolutionary energy. At the close of the eighteenth century, many eyes were on the city that fostered the spirit of political freedom during the American Revolution and then served as the nation’s capital. Political leaders had long been known to borrow the trappings of classical Greece to enforce an image of longstanding power and authority. This began with fresh gusto when the Peales and other prominent portrait painters paired Philadelphia’s leaders with columns and imagery that recalled Greece’s golden age. Classical architecture and institutions such as the Philadelphia Athenaeum (founded in 1814) also contributed to the city’s moniker as the “Athens of America.”

The Centre City Pump House, though ultimately short-lived, proved that a municipal waterworks system was a valuable service to a growing city. It helped build an architectural movement in the city that tied Philadelphia to that faraway birthplace of democracy. Equally notable is that it brought Benjamin Latrobe to the area to spread his practice of separating design and construction, a system that endured in many building projects in the United States.

Text by Kelsey Ransick, museum professional in the Philadelphia area with an MA in History from the University of Delaware.

Click on the base of the model to explore the building that stands on the site of the pump house today.

Thin bits of frizzled beef served on a locally-made Italian roll, usually topped with fried onions and Cheez Whiz drawn from the can with a paint stirrer, a cheesesteak is a sandwich unlike any John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), might have encountered. Cheesesteaks originated in 1930 as simply steak sandwiches, the cheese part coming later. The undisputed creators, Harry Olivieri and his brother Pat, ran a hot dog stand in South Philadelphia. One day, weary of eating their own dogs for lunch, they grilled some sliced beef with onions instead. — Text by Dianna Marder

The Friendship Gate, produced by artisans in Chinatown’s “sister city” of Tianijn, China in 1983, was installed at the intersection of Tenth and Arch Street in 1984. The gate provides a distinctive anchor for Philadelphia’s Chinatown, which has evolved since the nineteenth century to become a cultural and business center for multiple Asian immigrant groups. Chinatown’s borders have been redefined and reduced by urban renewal and infrastructure projects such as the Ben Franklin Bridge, the Vine Street Expressway, Independence Mall Urban Renewal Area, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Residents of Chinatown protested each of these projects, which resulted in businesses and homes being razed and residents displaced. One successful protest in 1973 resulted in a redesign of the Vine Street Expressway, so that the construction would not destroy three additional city blocks and a church within Chinatown. Even with local protests, Chinatown has been reduced in size from twelve city blocks to seven city blocks over the twentieth century. To help preserve Chinatown, the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation and other community organizations have developed affordable housing and streetscape projects to help preserve an ethnic residential neighborhood and cultural center.

A close examination of the face of this compass demonstrates the great care James Ramsey of Dublin took in crafting a piece that includes 360 lines marking degrees, ordinal as well as cardinal directions, and an elaborate image denoting North.  This careful construction suggests this compass, which was made sometime before 1680, was engineered to the highest scientific standards of the seventeenth century.  In addition to spending hours to make the compass, Ramsey probably would have constructed other pieces of surveying equipment to work in conjunction with the compass, including sight vanes (which look like tiny telescopes) and a protractor.

This compass was first used by John Ladd (1657-1740), a Quaker who immigrated to America in the early 1680s, to lay out boundaries for the colony of West Jersey. It was also likely used to help lay out the city of Philadelphia, although documents from that period do not definitely prove it. In 1688, six years after the founding of Philadelphia, William Penn (1644-1718) awarded land to Ladd in return for surveying work done in Philadelphia. However, there is no record that Ladd labored with Surveyor General Thomas Holme (1624-95) on the official land assessment project. Therefore, it seems more likely that this compass was used to lay out individual lots or blocks within Philadelphia than to mark boundaries of the new city. The original borders of the city, from South Street to Vine Street and between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, remained in effect until the Consolidation Act of 1854, which merged the city with the rest of Philadelphia County.

This original footprint of Philadelphia, the area that came to be called Center City, was purposefully laid out with straight lines and especially wide avenues dividing the city into quadrants at the intersection of Market Street (initially called High Street, the traditional British term for a town’s main thoroughfare) and Broad Street. Penn, who had lived through the Great Fire of London in September 1666, designed his model city in order to minimize the risk of a conflagration spreading from one Philadelphia neighborhood to the rest. As another fire suppression measure, the original city plan designated five squares as common public spaces in the center of the city (later the site of City Hall) and  in the center of each quadrant  (creating the public spaces later named Franklin Square, Washington Square, Rittenhouse Square, and Logan Circle).

As an especially valuable piece of equipment within the colonies, this compass later passed to Ladd’s son, John Ladd Jr.  It was used again in 1740 to help lay out the temporary boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, decades before the surveying of the Mason-Dixon Line.  The compass ended up in the collections of the Chicago Historical Society, on loan from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for an exhibition, but it returned to the HSP in 1981 as a sort of anniversary present just before the three-hundredth anniversary of Philadelphia. The compass came into the collection of the Philadelphia History Museum in 1999 as part of a transfer of more than 10,000 artifacts from the Historical Society.  This compass represents both the conscious creation of early Philadelphia as a green country town and the use of then-modern technologies to re-order the environment.

Text by Levi Fox, a Ph.D. candidate at Temple University.

A number of Civil War-era draft drums (often referred to during the period as “draft wheels,” “draft boxes,” or “wheels of destiny”) have survived around the United States. New York City draft drums have become especially prized because of their relationship with that city’s draft riot in 1863. While reaction to the draft in Philadelphia was not nearly as dramatic, the Philadelphia drum pictured here, likely used in the FIrst and Second Congressional Districts (but possibly throughout the city), serves as a reminder of how Philadelphians dealt with the draft and ultimately how a majority of Philadelphians came to support the war effort despite antebellum political and economic connections to the South similar to New York.

When Congress passed the Militia Act in July 1862, authorizing states to draft from their militias to fill each state’s quota of volunteers, Philadelphians had not experienced a draft or a direct military threat since the War of 1812. Most Philadelphians could not remember a time when there had been a draft, and few remembered details of past militia laws. During the Revolution and the War of 1812, Philadelphians had been subject militia drafts. During the Revolution, all white males between the ages of 18 and 53 were subject to the draft. When called, drafted men could hire substitutes to take their place. If the person was drafted into the militia he was expected to serve two months, but if he was drafted into the Continental Line, he was expected to serve seven or nine months. During the War of 1812, drafted militiamen were expected to serve no more than three months. After the War of 1812, the term was extended to a maximum of six months, but that never affected Philadelphians. When the new law in 1862 called for draftees to serve nine months, it was not an unprecedented amount of time, but Philadelphians would have needed  long memories to recall the last time they had been asked for that period of service.

Few Philadelphians doubted the legality of the draft, but some Philadelphians, typically “Peace” Democrats who questioned the conduct and necessity of the war, opposed it. In response, some Philadelphia Republicans and members of the National Union Party (a pro-Union Philadelphia coalition party made up of Whigs, Republicans, and disaffected Democrats) argued that mass conscription was necessary to win the war. To back up their claims, they cited the success of Napoleon’s conscripted army and reminded other Philadelphians that only fifty years earlier, there was, in fact, a draft. Nearly all Philadelphians agreed that a draft would fall hard upon Philadelphia’s middle and lower classes and the effect of the draft would have to be mitigated in some way.

For many, the best way to mitigate the effects of the draft was to avoid it all together. Drawing upon Philadelphia’s earlier experience with the draft and the city’s tradition of volunteerism, Philadelphians began raising money to pay incentives to men willing to enlist voluntarily. Eager to display Philadelphia’s patriotism to the rest of the country and spurred on by fears of social unrest and dislocation connected with the draft, Philadelphians participated in ward meetings to encourage suitable men to volunteer, raise bounties for enlistees, and raise funds to take care of families that might be affected by the draft. By 1862, war contracts had inaugurated a period of prosperity in the city that lasted until the end of the war, and this enabled elites, the middle class, and portions of the working class to donate to bounty funds and later to pay their way out of the draft entirely.

In August 1862, deputy provost marshals enrolled Philadelphia’s white males aged 18-45 into the militia. It was probably around this time that the draft drum pictured here, now in the Philadelphia History Museum’s collections, was built for use in at least the First and Second Congressional Districts. These two districts were nearly opposites when it came to the wealth of their inhabitants. The First Congressional District included the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Wards (Moyamensing and Southwark), and the riverfront portions of Northern Liberties and Philadelphia city districts east of Seventh Street; the Second Congressional District covered the First, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Wards, essentially everything below Wharton Street bounded by the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers plus the area between South and Vine Streets west of Seventh Street to the Schuylkill. The Second District, the Philadelphia Inquirer noted in 1863, had perhaps “the greatest wealth in the city” and “the aristocratical mansions of Walnut, Chestnut and Arch streets.” In contrast to the upper and middle class residents, relatively new housing, and spaciousness of the Second District, the densely populated, mostly working-class First District had a reputation as a slum with buildings that were among the oldest in the city.

In this era following the city consolidation of 1854 and redistricting, the First District was typically a Democratic stronghold, with many immigrant, working-class voters, while the Second District typically voted Whig. After the Whigs dissolved in the 1850s, the Second District voted Democratic in 1861, but then shifted in 1863 to the National Union Party as many of the district’s voters remained suspicious of the anti-slavery Republicans As the war and the draft unfolded, the two districts became Philadelphia’s barometer of the city’s pro-war or anti-war feeling. If any active resistance to the war was going to appear, it was widely assumed that it would happen in one of these districts, but particularly the 1st.

The only major violence associated with the draft in Philadelphia during the entire war took place not in 1863, as might be expected, but on August 29, 1862, in one of the wards that used this draft wheel: the Second Ward of the First Congressional District. When marshals began enrolling men into the militia, they were pelted with rocks by men and women near Eleventh and Montrose Streets in South Philadelphia. Injuries and arrests resulted, but no fatalities. Military provost marshals and city police quickly quashed even the slightest evidence of resistance.

By the time the draft in Philadelphia approached in September 1862, the city was a hectic place: Philadelphians raced to build their bounty fund and to enroll as many volunteers as possible to fill the city’s quota and avoid a draft. At the same time they steeled themselves to resist a possible Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania. By the end of September, news of the Confederate invasion of Maryland and subsequent Union victory at the Battle of Antietam overshadowed the draft. Finally, after several postponements to allow for continued recruiting and to double-check recruitment numbers, Philadelphia’s draft was canceled because the city had met its quota through volunteers.

By the end of 1862, the United States government determined that it still needed more men to crush the rebellion A new law passed in March 1863, the Enrollment Act, seemed to some citizens like a radical break with the past. Draftees would serve for three years, but like earlier American drafts, the new law provided incentives to enlist as well as many mechanisms to avoid service that largely favored the well-off. While those who created the law considered a fee of $300 to avoid service to be well within the means of working men, it seemed to many in Philadelphia’s poor and working class that the rich and poor bore unequal burdens in a fight for the freedom and equality of African Americans. Philadelphia Peace Democrats had always argued that the Republicans were would-be tyrants and that the war was being fought for the equality and freedom of African-Americans. Now, with the Emancipation Proclamation and harsher and occasionally unprecedented war measures like the draft, they thought that their predictions of Republican tyranny had come true and encouraged resistance. In Democratic areas, such as the First Congressional District, Philadelphians went to great lengths, including changing names and locations, to avoid the draft. In contrast, Republican papers argued that conscription had precedents and the draft was necessary to win the war and was generally accepted in Republican districts.

In 1863, as in the year before, Philadelphians relied on volunteerism to avoid the draft with little in supplementary funds from Philadelphia’s city budget. Rallies raised money to increase enlistment bounties and to provide for soldiers’ families. By July 1863, however, as bounties inflated nation-wide, it became apparent that a draft would be necessary. As Philadelphians celebrated the Union’s victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Miss., they began to prepare for their first draft in nearly fifty years, scheduled for mid-July.

Meanwhile, news also arrived of the violence in New York City on July 13, two days after the start of that city’s draft. Philadelphians feared a similar outbreak of violence in Democratic and immigrant neighborhoods. Even after the draft began in Philadelphia without signs of imminent violence, the newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Recorder, warned its readers that white Philadelphians would “not only resist the draft, but will pounce upon the colored people as they did in New York, and elsewhere.” Like New York, Philadelphia had strong political ties to the Southern Democratic Party, economic ties to slavery, and abolitionists who had been targets of ire by many of the city’s whites. However, unlike New York, much of Philadelphia’s anger had shifted away from abolitionists and the nascent Republican Party toward secessionists and people perceived to be their abettors, Philadelphia’s “Peace” Democrats. Further, the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg elated the city and quieted the war’s critics.

Fearing the same sort of violence that New York was experiencing, the First Congressional District’s Provost Marshall, former Democratic Congressman William Eckart Lehman (1821-95), warned that the “1st Dist[rict] contains the worst population in the state, and reports are brought to us (but what they are worth is hard to say) of threats of riot, accumulations of arms, etc.” To discourage trouble, the Army sent several regiments of infantry and cavalry and several batteries of artillery to Philadelphia, although they did not arrive until after the draft had begun. Lincoln appointed a popular Philadelphia Democrat, General George Cadwalader (1806-79), as commander of the Philadelphia military district. Cadwalader, a scion of one of Philadelphia’s most powerful families, a Mexican War hero, and the antebellum commander of Philadelphia’s militia, had led the militia that put down the 1844 nativist riots. City elites confidently expected that he would do the same for any draft-related riots.

With an expanded, empowered police department, provost marshals, soldiers ensuring order, and a predominantly loyal city, Philadelphia experienced no notably violent draft-related disturbances from 1863 until the end of the war.
The draft began as scheduled in “loyal” districts in mid-July. Even in purportedly less fractious areas, like the Frankford section of Philadelphia, military forces monitored the execution of the draft to deter to any would-be rioters. The draft did not reach the First or Second Congressional Districts until July 28, and by then tension had declined to the point that troops stationed in Philadelphia for the draft were sent elsewhere. Philadelphia emergency troops raised to meet the Confederate invasion were sent to the anthracite coal district in Northeast and North Central Pennsylvania to guard against any draft disturbances there. When the draft finally reached the First and Second Congressional Districts, it went over with an ease that defied expectations.

The mechanism for the draft in these districts, and possibly most of Philadelphia, was the draft drum at the top of this page. This drum, resembling a cheese box or hat box of the period, was described during the period as “a box” and a “wheel.” While we cannot be certain, evidence suggests that this draft drum was used throughout most of the city because accounts of draft drums used in other congressional districts describe a similar, easily portable “tin wheel” of “about two feet in diameter.” Because of its light weight and portable construction, it could have been easily transported from congressional district to congressional district. With the exception of the days the draft was held in the Fifth Congressional District, which also included parts of Bucks County, the draft took place in Philadelphia one precinct at a time, so only one draft drum would have been necessary to carry out the draft for most of Philadelphia.

Use of the draft drum followed a standard process. On the day of the draft, the drum was moved to a platform outside the provost marshal’s office in the congressional district where a ward’s draft was to take place. A crowd of usually a few hundred people gathered to watch the proceedings, which were also attended by the provost marshal, all of the draft commissioners, and other ward representatives. Slips of paper, each of with the name of an eligible man, were placed inside the drum and then jumbled by turning the crank for several minutes. To ensure fairness, representatives of the ward’s political parties observed on the platform, and a blind man placed his hand inside the drum’s opening to pick out the names. After the ward filled its quota, typically after several hours, officials counted the unpicked slips of paper to further verify the fairness of the proceedings.

The draft in the First District did not erupt in violence, contrary to Provost Marshal Lehman’s fears. If the Republican-friendly newspapers were accurate, the 1st and 2nd Districts showed evidence of enthusiasm. In the Fifth Ward of the First District, the Inquirer reported, “Mr. Parvin [the blind person chosen to pick names out of the wheel] sang ‘the Lafayette Song,’ which he stated he sang when he was ten years of age—during LaFayette’s visit to this country. At the conclusion he was called on by the crowd for the Star Spangled Banner, which he also sang with great spirit. The crowd then dispersed amid great enthusiasm.” As the draft continued, newspapers began to compare Philadelphia and New York again, only this time to put Philadelphia’s loyalty in sharp relief. Philadelphians happily contrasted their enthusiasm and order with New York’s bloody riots: “The Quaker city may congratulate itself that the proud name which it has earned as a law-abiding people received new distinction,” the Inquirer boasted.

By early August 1863, Philadelphia completed its draft. More than 20,000 men had been chosen from Philadelphia’s five congressional districts. Those selected had several weeks to hire a substitute, pay a $300 commutation fee, or to show medical reasons that made them not fit for the service. According to historian J. Matthew Gallman, of the tens of thousands chosen, only 21 percent (4,169) were made to join the Army, find a substitute, or pay a $300 commutation fee. Of that total the far majority chose to find a substitute or to pay the $300 commutation fee as only 343 people drafted actually entered the Army Compared to the rest of the state, Gallman concluded, in 1863 Philadelphia and Bucks County (which was part of the shared Fifth Congressional District) provided 28.8 percent of Pennsylvania’s quota but only 9.8 percent of Pennsylvania’s draftees, a testament to the effectiveness of the Philadelphia’s voluntarism and wealth.

To keep Philadelphia’s bounties competitive with neighboring areas, the City Council began paying a greater share of bounties as voluntarism could no longer keep pace. In 1864, the city dedicated nearly half of its budget to pay bounties and support families of soldiers. The lucrative bounties, often around $1,000, enabled Philadelphia to weather the drafts of 1864 with little problem. After the Union asked for 500,000 more volunteers in February 1864, only the Fifth Congressional District was forced to draft, and only fifteen men were forced to serve. By February 1865, when the last draft took place in Philadelphia, the rebellion was nearly crushed. The draft took place in the First, Second, and Fifth districts, and it provided a little under 500 men.

After 1865, Philadelphians did not participate in another draft until 1917 (for World War I) and then 1940 (prior to U.S. entry into World War II). By that time, memories of the Civil War draft had faded, along with this draft drum. Sometime after 1865, this draft wheel was donated to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. During renovations in October 1940, it was rediscovered along with posters offering bounties to men who would volunteer instead of waiting to be drafted. Coming to light merely weeks after the enactment of the first peacetime draft in American history, the wheel and posters became relevant again and displayed in an exhibit about Philadelphia’s Civil War-era recruiting practices. Never again lost from memory, the draft drum remained in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s artifacts collection, later transferred to the Philadelphia History Museum.

Text by Matthew C. White, who earned his M.A. in history at Rutgers University-Camden.

This face shield for a police helmet is made of Plexiglas. Whenever it has been on exhibit at the Philadelphia History Museum, it has attracted the attention of visitors, especially boys. Especially fascinating is the bullet that can be seen lodged in the center of the shield. Fired from a gun at close range in a test for the Philadelphia Police Department, the bullet stopped just millimeters from breaking through the inside of the mask. The bullet hit the Plexiglas, which is just under a half of an inch thick, started to melt the plastic, and then expanded and began to break apart. Other, thinner versions of the mask were tested, and they either shattered on impact or managed to slow bullets that melted the Plexi.

This mask came to the Philadelphia History Museum in 1991 from the Firearms Identification Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department, but it is also part of the region’s history of industrial innovation. Plexiglas is a trade or brand name for a clear acrylic plastic developed in the 1930s by the Rohm and Haas Company, based in Philadelphia. Described by company president Otto Rohm (1876-1939) as “organic glass,” Plexiglas is thermoplastic, meaning that it can be heated and then molded or formed into many shapes. It can be worked using readily available tools such as drills and saws. Plexiglas, along with other acrylic plastics such as Lucite and Perspex, had a great impact on everyday life and specialized manufacturing during the second half of the twentieth century

Rohm and Haas began developing its clear acrylic plastics in the early 1930s at the company’s facilities in Darmstadt, Germany, and in Bristol, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia. Production of sheets of Plexiglas began in Darmstadt in 1934 and at the Bristol facility in 1936.  While it is one thing to develop a new material, it is quite another find uses for it. Early uses for Plexiglas were in spectacles, display cases, and lighting fixtures. Plexiglas got a big boost at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where many products using Plexiglas were displayed. The General Motors pavilion at the fair had an illuminated sign made of Plexiglas and inside a Pontiac with a Plexiglas body allowed visitors to see the automobile’s inner workings.

By far the biggest market for Plexiglas was with the military. In 1938 Rohm and Haas sold almost half a million dollars’ worth of Plexiglas, 80 percent of it for use in military aircraft.  Sales soared after the start of World War II, as the military used Plexiglas in bombardier and gunner enclosures, gunner turrets, in side windows and in the tail assemblies of thousands of planes. By 1944, Rohm and Haas sales of Plexiglas reached $22 million, virtually all of it from the military.

After the Second World War, sales of Plexiglas fell drastically (in 1947, its largest market came from manufacturers in need of clear covers for juke boxes). The company returned to promoting the pre-war uses of Plexiglas in spectacles, light fixtures, and architecture. A major breakthrough for the future came when Dr. Stanton Kelton Jr. (1915-93), a member of the Plexiglas production laboratory, found a dye for Plexiglas molding powder that would not fade with exposure to light. Plexiglas molding powder became the industry standard in the production of tail lights for American automobiles.

Colored Plexiglas also spelled the end of neon signs and altered the urban landscape in the United States and around the world. Before World War II, a sign could be illuminated in one of two ways: by shining a light directly on it or by using neon-filled glass tubes to outline or trace design elements. With the advent of colored sheets of Plexiglas, it became possible to make signs using layers of the colored plastic, and they could be lit internally. Sales of Plexiglas for signs took off in 1948 after Underwriters Laboratories (an independent testing company that cities and insurance companies rely on) developed standards for the use of Plexiglas in signs.

The object pictured on this page represents an experiment with Plexiglas that did not quite work out. Dating from the late 1960s, when the Philadelphia Police Department sought greater protection for officers facing angry crowds during street demonstrations, it is a Plexiglas face shield for a police helmet. Police helmets already used Plexiglas face shields, but the city of Philadelphia approached the Rohm and Haas Company to see if it could help develop something that could stop a bullet fired at close range. The Department tested a number of face shields of increasing thickness, and this one finally stopped a bullet. Face shields like this one were never used, however, because they proved impractical in another way: weighing just over three and one half pounds, they were too heavy for officers to carry along with their other equipment. Although the experiment failed, it foreshadowed the subsequent use of Plexiglas and other clear plastics as “bandit barriers” to deter robberies of banks and stores.

When the first sheets of clear Plexiglas rolled off the machines in Darmstadt and Bristol, no one knew what its uses would be. Was anyone thinking about jukeboxes in the 1930s, much less bombardier enclosures or millions of back-lit signs? The many uses of Plexiglas developed by Rohm and Haas demonstrated innovation in technology, a hallmark of Philadelphia industry.  The region’s innovators have included such industrialists as saw manufacturer Henry Disston (1898-78), hat-maker John B. Stetson (1830-96), and radio builder A. Atwater Kent (1873-1949).  As they built companies that employed thousands of Philadelphians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, like the maker of Plexiglas they each used creative intelligence and technology to develop products that met contemporary needs.

Text by Jeffrey Ray, Senior Curator of the Philadelphia History Museum for 29 years and now retired.  He keeps himself busy teaching at the University of the Arts, Drexel University, and St. Joseph’s University.

Click here to watch a Rohm and Haas film, “Looking Ahead Through Plexiglas” (1947, via YouTube).